Without Shepard, No Vakarian
by Phthalo
Summary: How Garrus spent his summer vacation, or those few months between the Collector Base and the Reaper attack on Palaven. There will be feels. And angst. And, I'm going to guess, interspecies sexing.
1. Survival

**1. Survival**

They limp back through the relay, silent with the shock of still drawing breath. They survived. All of them. Somehow Shepard saw them through, and they all survived. He knows of no scale against which to assess what just happened.

The crew is harrowed, but eager for action. In spite of being used to it, the din of their depthless human voices sounds strange all over again. He debates turning off his translator, turns on the Club Kicks mix instead, turns it off in a haste after a handful of notes.

It's a relief of sorts when she calls everyone to the wrecked conference room, where she makes a speech against a background of sparks from the gutted wall panels. It has to be one of her best, if reactions are telling. She even jokes with EDI, but as soon as it's done, he can't recall a single word. It all ends with handshakes, cheering, select hugging, and he wonders if any of them are going through the same motions he is. He estimates she holds his hand longer than anyone else's, but their exchange is straight-up textbook.

"Thank you, Garrus. I couldn't have done this without you."

"I always knew you'd come through, Shepard."

As soon as it's convenient, he retreats to the battery to inventory crash damage, and that's when it hits him how easily she could have plummeted to her death in that last, desperate jump toward the shuttle as the Collector base crumbled away. It takes his talons a hundred and one seconds to unclench.

By the time they dock in Omega, the engineering team has compiled a preliminary repair assessment. The Normandy can be back to roughly ninety-three percent functionality in less than one standard galactic month. After conferring with EDI, Tali and Joker, Shepard seems so satisfied with the numbers, that the first thing she does after the meeting is drop a respectable chunk of Cerberus funds to book the Afterlife's largest VIP room.

He figures the party successful, even by Omega's standards. They are all high on the peculiar success of survival, which is to say they're reeling from a brush with death, so it doesn't take much to generate a good time. There is booze: she convinces Legion it should attempt synthesizing ryncol. There is music: she told the truth about Expel 10 when she baited Morinth. There is dancing: she makes up with enthusiasm what she lacks in skill. There are drunken displays of affection: her arm flung around Mordin as Tali wobbles in front of them, trying to access the camera on her omnitool.

There is even hooking up: her body pressed up against his in a dark corner of the club. She drags her teeth across the vulnerable skin of his throat, fumbles with one of his armor clasps. His heartbeat increases in a way he identifies as arousal, but it is cognitive work, connecting those dots.

"Shepard, let's go back to the ship."

"I thought you'd never ask."

He doesn't correct her assumption. "I'm not asking."

"Oh, you like to give orders, do you, Vakarian?"

In different circumstances her smile would be invitation enough. As things stand, he disentangles her hands from his armor and, hand on her waist, gets her through the crowd. It takes all his dexterity and ingenuity combined to steer her through Omega's zigzagging corridors, to the docking bay, and into the Normandy's cramped elevator.

"Garrus," she says, pulling him closer. Her cheeks are flushed, her pupils dilated. His name in her mouth makes him think of her soft, moist recesses.

"You're drunk, Shepard."

"That's never stopped me before."

He maneuvers around her to reach the control panel, an act that takes more willpower, he realizes with a start, than not taking that shot on Sidonis. "Get some sleep," he says, as the doors slide shut between them.


	2. Stress Reaction

**2. Stress Reaction**

Sleep doesn't come, and he's not so drunk he can pass out. He's just inebriated enough to be bothered by having refused Shepard's invitation, without a good reason why he shouldn't have given it a go. Abstracted, he switches on his terminal—switches it off at finding no extranet connection.

"My apologies, Garrus." EDI's inflection conveys the right amount of polite contriteness. "The communication channels will be up and running in approximately three hours, eight minutes and thirty-one seconds. Shepard requested a sweep of all networks before the Normandy goes online again."

"That's fine. It's not urgent."

"Very well, Garrus. Shepard also requested a full disable on all Cerberus monitoring devices. You may experience glitches at the battery console until the operation is complete."

"Yes, thank you, EDI."

The AI signs off with a faint, electronic crackle. He should rest, but he goes over his last exchange with Shepard instead. She wanted an encore, so it must have gone right, their—what should he call it? Exercise in human-turian relations? Interspecies congress? A good, if frenzied, fuck?

It bothers him that he only has euphemisms for their encounter, and it bothers him further that he can't just leave it at that. Knowing he's undergoing a standard acute stress response only aggravates matters. He gives up the idea of sleep, marches himself up to her quarters. She can soldier through—so can he.

Her cabin is empty, and all that keeps him from turning around and heading back down to look for her is the faint susurrus of the shower. The image of her rounding the corner to face him, her hand shaking out her still damp hair, is so persistent, he has trouble separating this moment, where he's standing in her empty cabin, from the one sixty-three hours ago. He thinks he can time it to the minute, if he tries.

"Shepard?" He taps on the bathroom door, knowing she can't hear him through the shower. Might as well have a practice run, so he slides along the wall until he's sitting on the floor. "Just wanted to let you know I'm sorry. About earlier. I'll be here unless you tell me to go.

He closes his eyes, focuses on the sound within, and waits. One minute, five, he's run through the opening theme of Vaenia, and the water's still running. Something is off. He kills the audio link, and listens to the too regular murmur of water. There's no variation, only white noise. If ryncol poisoning kicked in, EDI would have issued medical alerts, even with the the privacy directives she's likely been given.

Not physical, then. He goes over the events of the last seventy-two hours again. It doesn't take long to form a hypothesis, although the resulting conclusion seems to him like a strange object, whose function is familiar but unknown. As he stands, he notes his resistance to reconciling expectations with facts.

His hand hovers above the door before knocking. Walking away isn't a viable option; he takes a steadying breath, then: "Hey, Shepard, it's Garrus. Talk to me."

The only reply is the running of water.

"Okay, I'm going to assume you enjoy long showers. To that, I'll add long walks on the beach, interior decorating, stylish turian vigilantes, and finding new and exotic fish. You'll notice I didn't say anything about feeding them."

The shower's still going, but he thinks he can detect a shift in the sound pattern of falling water. He leans on his elbow, facing the door. "Feel free to correct anything I get wrong, by the way. So, your galactic dating profile. Definitely mention galaxy saving, crank-calling the Council and headbutting krogan. If they don't find that, respectively, impressive, hilarious, and endearing, they're not worth your time. Say nothing about dancing. You want to keep it smooth at this stage. Oh, and—"

The door slides open with a soft pneumatic hiss. She stands in the doorway, fully clothed and soaking wet, her jaw clenched against involuntary shivers. Behind her, the water keeps running without a single trace of steam.

"So, my dancing is the reason I needed a cold shower. Noted."

"Shepard, I'm sorry."

"No, it's okay." She waves off his apology, and moves past him into the cabin. "Stress reaction. It's nothing."

It's a relief to turn off that shower. He grabs a towel, puts it around her. "Hey, you should change."

"This is nothing," she says with a convulsive laugh, and begins pacing. Her breathing is ragged, almost gasping. "You should have seen me after Mindoir. That— that was bad. This is nothing. This is—nothing. Garrus—"

Their glances meet, and her voice breaks. Nothing has ever felt so urgent as closing the distance between them and putting his arms around her. She bucks against him for an instant, before relaxing into the embrace with, what seems to him, agonizing reluctance. They say nothing. There's nothing to say.

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_A huge thanks to _**clafount**_, without whose input (and Traynor jokes) I'd still be wrestling with this chapter.  
_


	3. Real Estate

**3. Real Estate  
**

"It's not the fanciest place, but if you ever need a break during repairs, it's here."

Her look at the key card he's holding says she's surprised. "I didn't think you could afford real estate on a vigilante's income."

"Oh, I can. So long as it's hamster-sized."

"Don't give Boo ideas." She ignores the key card, and moves past him into the tiny living room that's clearly meant to pull its weight as both an entry hall and dining space. There's cognitive disconnect in watching Commander Shepard run her trigger finger across a narrow, dented and dusty dining bar. "Should I even ask how you ended up in possession of an apartment on Omega?"

"The partner of one of my team. He went to stay with his sister on the Citadel for a while."

"And he figured you'd be interested."

"Something like that."

"Archangel House Sitting Services, huh?"

It's a relief to hear her joke. In the few days since the party at Afterlife, she's buried herself in the minutiae of getting the Normandy operational again. They all have, but her focus has been intense enough to make them all look relaxed. He steps further into the room, and says, "The credits have to come from somewhere."

"Did you know that the first big thing I bought with my Spectre salary was an apartment? A week after the last debriefing, I was plunking down credits for a two bedroom, three bath flat near Flux." She crosses the short length of the room and peers into the darkness of the small adjoining bedroom. Her voice sounds to him extra toneless as she says, "I never moved in. The Alliance probably has it now, combing it for signs I was planning to desert them for Cerberus."

He sits at the end of the bar, watches her pace out the length of the room with slow, measured steps. She's never brought up the Alliance. Not after Horizon, not after Alchera. He masters the impulse to sit up straight, schools his body into a relaxed posture. "If you had been, the last place you'd leave proof would be your brand new apartment."

"You'd think. Still." She gestures, a fluid shake of arm and shoulder. "I'll have to turn myself in."

"You're not a criminal, but I know what you mean. The Reapers are still out there."

"That, yes, but first I need more intel." She's made it to the farthest end of the room, and shadows obscure her expression. All he can make out is the faint red glint that persists in her eyes even though her scars have healed. "Do you remember that lead for Liara Cerberus sent just before the jump?"

"The Shadow Broker base."

"Yes. I need to know the specifics of what was recovered off Alchera, of what the box they shipped my body in contained. They'll want that data. _I_ want that data."

"A good precaution," he says, knowing only another turian would register the variation in his subvocal harmonics. "I'm with you, Shepard."

"You are. What I mean is, thank you. For being there, for the other night."

They haven't spoken about what happened after the party, and he's not convinced there's anything to add. He's not convinced there isn't, either. His mandibles flex against his will. He shifts on the bar stool, and holds up the key card. "And don't forget to thank me for finding you a luxury pad on Omega."

"Tell you what," she says as she sits on the stool next to his. "I'll come here to recharge once in a while, but you come with me. Deal?"


	4. You Are the Sweetest Limbo

**4. You Are the Sweetest Limbo**

It is a strange rhythm they settle into after the daily check-in on the Normandy's repairs. A quick run to the nearest dive for a pile of the daily levo and dextro specials, then off to the apartment with nothing but cheap, greasy food and their hunger.

They eat with abandon, couple in a fever on every available surface, wake up sore and tangled in each other's strange limbs. She smells like the bittersweet salt of the Exodus Sea, tastes like tears, and the thin skin of her eyelids fluttering in deep REM cycles reminds him of fragile naphidae wings.

Once upon waking, her breath hot against the quickening pulse at his neck, she tells him she dreamt of the spiky Mindoir grass poking her bare thighs as her mother chased after her with a cheap holovid cam. Before the Batarian raid. After. In some eternal dream Mindoir where she never joins the Alliance and her young life does not culminate in smoke, screams and loss.

"Oh, Garrus," she says as she fits her body to his, her alien skin smooth like water, "I ran from her until I fell into the sky. I could see planets burn. It was just like like dying."

He doesn't know what to say. She's died; he hasn't. He's mourned her. He's found her again. The woman straddling him has known anastasis, evaded the right of all life to end, yet she is here, flesh and bone.

He runs his talons across her body, from her shoulders to her thighs, hungry for her unfailing reaction: prickled skin, increased breathing, that guttural half-sigh half-moan that always ends with her arching her back. She almost growls when he brushes the sensitive tips of his fingers across her taut, pebbled nipples, and he can scent the salt in the heated slickness between her thighs. Her toes curl up against the inside of his spurs, and she laughs.

"Garrus," she says. She rakes her fingers across the sensitive skin of his waist, echoes the gesture with her teeth on his throat. Against his mouth plate she says, "Garrus."

Shivers build at the base of his spine in perfect synch with the roll of her hips, and he gives in, grips the maddening slope of her iliac crest, pulls her toward him. She cries out when he enters. This isn't Commander Shepard. This is— this is—

On impulse one afternoon he adds data parameters for human vital signs to his visor, calibrating them to her readings. Watching the numbers flicker into being inside the narrow view field makes him feel like he can quantify their exchanges. Data becomes the sole distinct shape in a sea of blurred feeling. This thing they are doing can't last, and all he'll have to cling to when it ends will be the remembered blue facts of her pulse, her heartbeat, her respiration rate.

.

* * *

_In 200-word and tastefully filmed form, this chapter was the seed for the story. I'm extra fond of it, even with the softcore, so be nice to mah preshus.  
_


	5. The Trouble With Reality

_This will be the last chapter for about a couple of weeks. Thank you to everyone who's followed, read, and especially, commented! Your interaction is part of the reason why I was able to update this so fast._

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* * *

**5. The Trouble With Reality**

The cool gray letters of Liara's message scroll across his datapad. She's culled it from C-Sec channels and routed it to him before they jumped to the Sowilo system, but he missed it the last salvo of preparations before the Shadow Broker base. Now that's concluded, he has ample time to go over all the messages he ignored on Omega, and it figures that news of Sidonis would be first.

It's only because she's stopped by the battery unannounced that Shepard gets a glimpse of his clenched posture, the irritated flex of his mandibles. He thought she'd still be with Liara, looking for data regarding her body, but here she is. Her scent precedes her, a vibrant oscillation at the edges of his olfactory perception that he knows is too faint for anyone but a turian to discern. He steals some calm by sifting through its layers before holding the tablet out to her.

"It's Sidonis, Shepard. He killed himself while in C-Sec custody." The sentence sounds odd and empty, and he is aware of dull, unfocused anger as he watches her read.

"I'm sorry," she says. She hands back the datapad, her face a mask. "I was being selfish, you know."

It takes him a moment to understand what she means, and he can't stop surprise from rippling through his sub-tones. "Sparing Sidonis?"

"Yes."

"What do you mean?"

Out of the corner of his eye he catches the flicker in her vital signs, but when she speaks, there is nothing to correlate the calm she displays with the numbers on his visor.

"You were always intense, and reckless." She lingers over her adjectives, her mouth almost curving at its left corner the way it does every time she nails a difficult shot. Her flat, human voice wavers, imbuing her speech with fleeting depth. "But you— never lacked compassion. Losing that wasn't an option. You're a good man, Garrus Vakarian."

For a moment, it looks like she might reach out to touch him. The fingers of her gun hand twitch, a faint tremor; only the numbers scrolling on his visor give away her elevated heart rate. A sharpness infuses her scent before she adds with uncharacteristic hesitation, "I should have told you before now. Or maybe, I should have said nothing at all."

"No, I'm glad you did." The motions. He's going through motions again. This is not what he expected.

"Are you all right, Garrus?"

"Yeah. Just— you know."

"Okay." Her expressions are too familiar by now to miss that she's biting back questions. "I wanted you to know in case I don't get a chance to say anything later."

"So this it it, then?"

"Well, this might not be the best time for my plans to take over Omega." Her smile is by turns wistful, ironic. "Anderson has already made contact with people he thinks can help, but the only way to mobilize the Alliance is if I'm there. As soon as I've reviewed and collated the data from Liara with what Miranda and EDI compiled, I'm making that call to Hackett. I'm telling the crew today, give them a chance to leave if they want. That's what I came here to tell you."

The Normandy's peculiar brand of hum-filled silence follows her departure. Would he be so surprised by her admission regarding Sidonis if he hadn't seen the wild spike in her numbers? His compassion is not hers to lose, and it's just like Shepard to nudge, prod, persist, interfere. Unsatisfactory synonyms, because—if he's honest—there's a troubling thrill of satisfaction in uncovering the extent of her possessiveness. He sets the datapad aside, aware he'd been clenching it since she gave it back. Time to let Omega go. Sidonis made his choices, just like he made his when he trusted her instincts.

He switches on his audio link, turns up the volume. It's disconcerting, the realization he no longer prefers Shepard remaining untouchable, a cipher.


	6. Event Horizon

_Thank you to **clafount**, and the CMDA discussion, for helping me keep Verner from party crashing this scene. You don't want to know. Really._

* * *

**6. Event Horizon**

She makes the call to Hackett one standard galactic week after helping Liara, and her meeting with the Alliance—he refuses to say she's turning herself in—is set up the same way one would make a lunch date. Three hours before Citadel arrival, he goes up to her cabin.

The rigid line of her jaw as she watches the aquarium mocks her relaxed posture, and her gaze darts after the unpredictable turns of Thessian Sunfish. "Garrus," she says. "You didn't bring any wine."

"It'd still be cheap." The indigo flicker of her vitals is an intrusion, and it's so easy to blink them off he wonders he hasn't done it sooner. "Better without."

The sweet-bitter scent of her shampoo beckons to him, a botanical patina over swirling layers of salt, warm musk, and heated human skin. Dark hollows shadow her eyes, her mouth a grim line.

"Did you know I could still taste you the entire time we were in the Collector Base? Even after we jumped back. Remember that return speech—you were still in my mouth."

Her words are a jolt, from chest to groin plates. He allows himself a twin-larynxed hum as he runs his talons through the burnt umber of her hair until they rest at the base of her neck. Through her half-open lips he can glimpse the pink tip of her sleek human tongue.

"Good," he says. Thumb-tip and talon edge trace the contour of her mouth, and she leans her face into his palm, bites it, licks it, her tongue wet and hot. He presses his forehead to hers, and says, "Some things are better than words."

"Mhm."

Another thing he should have done before now: "Turn off your translator."

A quirk of the eyebrow, followed by a slow, private smile as she kisses the pad of his index, guides it to the hollow behind her ear. He can feel the faint irregularity in her skin at the subdermal implant, little bigger than one of the constellation of freckles on her shoulders. There's a small pop, felt more than heard, and the shut-off is complete. Her smile persists as she reaches for his visor.

A blink in the second before it comes off: her likeness as she looks up at him, captured.

The restraint with which they begin unencumbering one another of clothing is short lived. They don't bother with the bed, but grab and fumble at each other's garments—it galvanizes, the knowledge they're running out of time. The need to wrench out of her everything left unsaid uncoils and snaps within him. His larynxes vibrate, a low, feral hum. He pins her against the fish tank, its blue glow a halo around her dark form, and runs his hands across her torso, from shoulders to waist and back again. It takes focus to pace himself, to keep the pressure behind his groin plates contained.

Her gasp is sharp, a near hiss, in response to the slow raking of his talons across the whisper-soft skin on the sides of her breasts. He squeezes her hardened nipples between thumbs and forefingers, lowers his head to circle each of them with his tongue. Her fingers half-grab half-stroke his fringe, and she arches into him, writhing with need.

Sounds escape her. The part of his brain trained to inspect and analyze stimuli instinctively categorizes: implosive, open, liquid, round, sibilant. Clarity emerges out of the aural chaos. She's saying his name. "Garrus," she says. And again: "Garrus."

The hum builds in his chest. As he works his way down, nipping here, licking there, rumbling against the taut plane between her navel and pubic bone, he scents the tang of her arousal. He takes endless care as he slides his fingers across her heated core, within it, back across again.

It's never felt so good to hear her moan. He replaces his fingers with his tongue, intensifies his hum. With the same precision he dedicates to lining up a shot, he coaxes ripple after ripple of excitement out of her, each one punctuated by keening, inarticulate sounds. He doesn't let up, doesn't let his groin plates open until he hears her rapid, ragged intake of breath, feels the deep, rhythmic pulsing of her orgasm.

He stands. Her irises are but darkened rings around widened pupils while her mouth forms a string of breathy ejectives, heady diphthongs, and low slung stops, all wrapped around that maddening smile of hers. His mandibles flare in reciprocation as she grabs at him with uncoordinated movements. She trails fevered open-mouthed kisses across his jaw, imitates his hum against the steady vibration of his anterior larynx, pulls at him, hands closing and unclosing around his erection.

Part of him considers it a victory for them both, that he can curve his arm around her hips and pull her close, taste the salt in the hollows of her neck, without letting her wrap her legs around his waist. He grabs her hips, turns her around. She continues echoing his humming as her pelvis begins a languorous grind against him, heated core beckoning. Over her shoulder she watches him watch her, a piercing, direct stare.

The challenge is clear, but he will not be hurried. In the aquarium's ghostly light, the smooth curves and planes of her body seem sculpted out of the lambent paleness of distant nebulae, so unlike his own iridium-dark crags and angles. He hums his pleasure as he trails his talons across the small of her back, angles her hips just so, and eases himself into her center. She sounds a whimper, something guttural, half-exhaled through the teeth. The light and shadow interplay on her tensing back reminds him of spectral desert planet landscapes. Faint aftershocks of her orgasm ripple all along his length, and he savors the fading throbbing before setting a deliberate pace.

She clenches around him with each stroke, hips rocking to meet his thrusts. His humming turns into a steady thrum, and he picks up tempo. The familiar pressure builds with each stroke, urging him to slam into her faster and faster. Electric shivers radiate throughout his body.

He has just enough presence of mind to reach around, place his palm so that the friction of their grinding brings her a second release. She voices a single vowel, low and open, pushes back against him.

He leans in, his thrumming dark and low. The pressure is too much to bear. Behind closed lids, supernovas explode in synch with the orgasm ripping through him. All he wants to do is hold on, tumble forever into this unknowable, familiar abyss.

Three hundred and two seconds later, she turns to face him. Her palm sears his chest. That smile coils around a lazy, satisfied sigh: "Garrus."

He tucks a strand of rust-colored hair behind her ear, traces the line of her jaw. He will remember this moment later, recognize it as the precise instant where everything between them changed. He'll even be able to break down the sounds to their component parts: an alveolar slash, leading into the low arch of a high vowel, rushing into a vibrant fricative, and underneath all that, a soft thump.

He sees her tapping the top of her sternum. He hears her saying, "Liv."

At any other time he might have asked questions, but here, her body next to his, he knows she's asking him to use her name. It's a drawing back of the veil she keeps over her private spaces, an invitation in.

He follows without hesitation. With his palm splayed against her heartbeat, he draws out the flanging, and says, "Liv."


	7. Return

**7. Return**

He goes back to Palaven. Solana waits for him at the shuttle port, slaps the intact side of his face.

"Good to see you too, Sol."

"Shut up," she says, and gives him a hug.

At home, his father greets him with his usual scrutinizing stare, but fails to synchronize his subvocals at hello. Whatever thoughts the old man has about the sudden waiving of medical fees for his wife's treatment he keeps to himself. Other than one awkward welcome home dinner and stilted updates on his mother's condition, they set him up in his old room and ask no questions. He guesses they are too enmeshed in their sorrow to bother with the prodigal son.

His Collector tissue donations to the Helos Medical Institute have translated to a private room at Aventen Medical Center, as well as two salarian experts on genome therapy for Corpalis Syndrome. They blunt none of the grim facts: neurological damage, hypertonia, impaired cognition, intermittent catatonia, prognosis poor.

When he does see her, she doesn't recognize him. From a certain perspective, this makes it easy to keep to himself. His mother would have been the only one of his family to shine a light on his dark corners. The universe has a sick sense of humor.

Not that he believes in the sentience of cold, infinite space.

When he's not visiting her, he watches the vids over and over. They were recorded exactly forty-six minutes after Liv got out of his arms and began dressing with precise, measured movements. She brushed her hair, reapplied her epi-patch, but didn't clean herself. Neither one of them did.

On the vids is Shepard, in civilian clothes, expressionless as reporters swarm around her Alliance escort like a pack of starved varren. He was next to her when she made the call to the press with thirty minutes to Citadel arrival, in spite of having assured both Anderson and Hackett of a low-profile transfer. She ignores press questions except to comment on the Reaper threat. Curt words, to the point, eyes boring through the camera.

In one recording, Councilor Anderson's tense expression can be glimpsed in the background. Khalisah al-Jilani has just asked the Alliance brass to comment on Shepard's Reaper warnings, and none of their evasive replies dim the bleakness of Commander Shepard's words, the intensity of her stare.

In the end, the talking heads have a field day: Reapers—fact or delusion; the first human Spectre in disgrace; ties to human supremacist group; court martial possible

A month of this, at most. And then—nothing. She falls off the grid like she never came back from the dead to do what she does best. Liara sends him a brief update on an encrypted channel: _Earth, Vancouver, Alliance base. Relieved of command. House arrest. __No court martial yet. _

He shuts off his commlink in disgust. He paces. He downloads the capture he took of her their last time on the Normandy to his battered old vid screen, and stares at it until it's time for his evening visit.

His mother is having a good enough night to be sitting by a window overlooking the vast Cipritine skyline. Vases filled with the slender argintius blooms she used to love crowd most surfaces, a sign his father stopped by earlier.

"Hi, Mom," he says.

She doesn't answer. She only answers on the best of nights, and tonight is just above average. Under the blanket covering her atrophied legs, he can see the regular tremor of her hands. Her bright blue eyes are fixed on the distant silver horizon.

He sits in the chair next to hers and places his hand on top of hers. She's so frail, like she's being erased out of existence from the inside. "Looks like it'll be a clear night. We'll get to see Nanus trailing Menae."

He thinks he detects a slackening in her hands' involuntary motion, and he pretends she's whole again, capable of helping him unburden. He squeezes her hand through the blanket and says, "Remember that story you used to tell me, about Nanus and Menae? Nanus couldn't let Menae go alone into the silver fog of the spirit lands, even if it meant changing along with her. Now they are one spirit, and they follow each other through the stars until the end of time."

The tremors stop for a moment, start up again. She's tilted her head a little toward him, but her rigid neck muscles prevent further motion. Her eyes, it seems to him, burn like blue suns.

"Of course, you told it better than that," he says as he helps ease her posture. A long, miserable pause, then: "You always knew what to say, what to do. I know you still do, while I—"

His mother's fragile hand flutters like a trapped naphidus as the pale orb of Menae comes into view. Behind it rises the smaller, bluish semicircle of Nanus, and he thinks he can feel the universe blooming secret and black behind the familiar sight of Palaven's moons.


	8. Rites

_Apologies for the update delay. The next two updates are still going to be irregular, but it should be back to a weekly-ish schedule after that. _

* * *

**8. Rites**

Cremation is easy, as death rites go. A cocoon of silence and isolation from midnight to midnight, that was once meant to fool the newly dead into believing the living were nothing but mute shades. He recalls bits and pieces from childhood lessons, and wonders in an idle, detached way whether his father or sister know the correct way to hum any of the old Valluvian chants.

It's overwhelming, the need to ask them this as they all emerge from their hermitage at moonrise to gather and sift the ashes. Their hands appear disembodied in the moonlit dark, covered as they are in the white gloves of mourning. The only other pale thing in the round crematory chamber is the mound of his mother's ashes, almost gleaming under the domed ceiling's oculus.

His hands shake as he receives a frontal plate fragment from his father, and he has to close his eyes and take a steadying breath before he can touch his forehead to it, hand it to Solana to place in the sleek, iridium glazed urn.

The Garrus who emerges from the cremation hall is not the Garrus who entered.

That certainty persists through the days that follow, like the disquieting memory of an oppressive dream. He draws comparisons to other losses—his team, Shepard before them—but concludes those were echoes of this event, experienced in temporal displacement.

Those hurts should have prepared him. They didn't.

Visitation is hardest. Hearing the stories of Roya Vakarian's life is nothing short of a vivisection of her memory, pieces of her paraded around to assuage the living. He finds the recollections of relatives and strangers obscene.

Most of the guests are unknown to him, and he only has indistinct memories of the ones he recognizes. Odd, to realize he's been away long enough that commonplace exchanges feel forced. It strikes him that this must be a similar experience to coming out of prolonged suspended animation, and being asked to provide a facsimile of oneself with only wispy memories and a lifetime's worth of disconnect.

He wonders if this is how Liv felt when she first woke in that Cerberus facility, but he banishes the thought as soon as it occurs. He can't think of Shepard. Not now, and _not_ in those terms.

"My condolences." One of his father's military cronies has approached him. Her white markings stand in stark contrast to her oxidized steel coloring, and he finds the pattern of dots above her frontal plates familiar. "Daria Fedorian," she adds after a short pause. "I served with Roya just out of the Academy. Your mother was the best sniper in the legion. I hear you inherited her skill."

"You did." It's a stupid thing to say, his almost question, but he can't help it. The last thing he expected was Hierarchy officials taking note of him. Out of the corner of his eye he catches a glimpse of his father watching the exchange from across the room. "I'm sorry, General Fedorian. I think the last time we met I was still practicing with toy guns."

"Yes, I think that's right. It must have been, what—over twenty years ago? But I won't keep you. Maybe we'll get to talk again, in different circumstances. Spirits guide you."

"And you be guided." The traditional reply, sure, but he spends the rest of Visitation mulling over Daria Fedorian's words. Conjecture calms him, helps him say the right things to the right people at the right times.

After the last guest leaves, his father hands him a tall glass of brandy. As if planned, Solana has disappeared, leaving the clean-up to them. Ganix Vakarian seems more alert than he's been in weeks. "So, Garrus," he says at the end of a deliberate sip. "You want to tell me what's really going on?"

He swirls the brandy around in the glass. He has yet to fulfill his Visitation duty of sharing a memory of the dead, so he shouldn't be drinking. If his father, the traditionalist, meant to unseat him by skipping over the whole point of the event, he succeeded. "What do you mean, Dad?"

"Everything. You running off with that human Spectre, leaving C-Sec, Omega, that Collector business, the moping—everything."

"Shepard thought you wouldn't approve."

"You haven't cared about my approval in a long time, Garrus."

There's a gentleness in his father's words, unlike the last time they spoke this way. Then, Shepard was dead. Presumed dead. Resurrected. He said nothing because the instant Shepard's auburn head in his scope proved the return rumors true, the words no longer demanded to be said. Things are different now.

He stalls: "Any idea why the Primarch's sister complimented my sharpshooting skills, Dad?"

"Is that what that was. I wondered."

There's nothing in his father's tones to suggest he had been General Fedorian's source. He sets the glass down, spins it around slowly. He can't bring himself to break with ritual, but he can't follow it either.

"I sort of told Mom about Shepard at my last visit," he says at length. For now, he refuses to speculate how his father will interpret that statement, or what his mother might have made of his rambling about Palaven's moons. "The other stuff—" He spreads his arms, an exasperated gesture. There's a knot in his throat, and he has to blink away the stinging in his eyes. "Everything is on the brink of destruction, Dad. I couldn't find a way to tell her that."

His father says nothing, just watches him over the rim of his glass with a calm devoid of his usual calculating stare.

That is what breaches his defenses. His belief in spirits is at best agnostic, but in this moment he chooses to believe his father's calm is the spirit of the family home, brought into existence by the end of a life together, well-lived. If he's going to fulfill his Visitation duty, this is it. Not with memories of the departed, but with the reasons why those memories must be protected.

The silence before he begins seems to him like a bridge to the unknown, and for the first time in years, he trusts the facts will be believed.


End file.
